HIGH HOPES

HIGH HOPES is a funny, sad and passionate film about three different factions of a London family: Cyril and Shirley, a neo-hippie, politically correct couple in their mid-thirties; Cyril's obnoxiously parvenu sister Valerie and her womanizing husband Martin, scratching their way toward middle-class; and Cyril and Valerie's elderly mother, an increasingly forgetful woman of quiet regret. Hailed as one of the brightest and most delightful new films from this year's bumper crop of good British movies, HIGHHOPES is, in its own dotty oddball way, a masterpiece.